Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery Part 18

According to Perotti (1430-1480), persons who had been bitten by this reptile fell into a state of melancholia and stupefaction. While in this condition they were very susceptible to the influence of music. At the very first tone of a favorite melody, they sprang up, shouting for joy, and danced without intermission until they sank to the ground, exhausted.

Frequent allusions to the remarkable therapeutic power of music, and especially to its specific anti-toxic virtues, are to be found in the works of many writers. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), in "Arcadia," book 1, said: "This word did not less pierce poor Pyrocles, than the right tune of music toucheth him that is sick of the tarantula." And Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), in "The Tale of a Tub," has this pa.s.sage: "He was troubled with a disease, reversed to that called the stinging of the tarantula, and would run dog-mad at the noise of music, especially a pair of bag-pipes." Again: "This Malady has been removed, like the Biting of a Tarantula, with the sound of a musical instrument."[199:1]

Many physicians and historians have written on this subject, and with singular unanimity have endorsed music as a curative agent for tarantism.

Notable among these were Alexander ab Alexandro, a prominent Neapolitan civilian, who flourished toward the close of the fifteenth century, and Athanasius Kircher, a famous German Jesuit, in a treatise ent.i.tled "Ars Magnetica de Tarantismo" (Rome, 1654). Dr. Richard Mead, in an essay on the tarantula, published in 1702, wrote that this insect was wont to creep about in the Italian corn-fields during the summer months, and at that season its bite was especially venomous. Music was the sole remedy employed, and none other was needed. Among other authorities may be mentioned: Dr. Pierre Jean Burette (1665-1747), "Dialogue sur la musique"; Dr. Giorgio Baglivi, "De Anatomia, Morsu et Effectibus Tarantulae Dissertatio" (1695); and Dr. Theodore Craanen, a Dutch physician, "Tractatus physico-medicus De Tarantula" (Naples, 1722).

Worthy of note also is an elaborate dissertation, "System einer Medizinischen Musik" (Bonn, 1835), by Dr. Peter Joseph Schneider, wherein the author devotes several pages to this interesting theme.

Dr. Mead, above mentioned, gave a curious description of the symptoms of tarantism. "While the patients are dancing," said he, "they lose in a manner the use of all their senses, like so many drunkards, and indulge in many ridiculous and foolish antics. They talk and act rudely, and take great pleasure in playing with vine-leaves, naked swords, red cloths, and the like. They have a particular aversion for anything of a black color, so that if a bystander happens to appear in apparel of that hue, he must immediately withdraw; otherwise the patients relapse into their symptoms with as much violence as ever."

FOOTNOTES:

[185:1] _New York Medical Record_, October 29, 1909.

[187:1] _Boston Daily Advertiser_, November 7, 1907.

[188:1] Mrs. John Lane, _The Champagne Standard_.

[188:2] _Chambers's Journal_, vol. lxxi, p. 145; 1894.

[189:1] _Appleton's Booklovers' Magazine_, July, 1905.

[189:2] _Boston Herald_, May 12, 1907.

[190:1] Wien (Vienna), 1807.

[190:2] _Philosophical Transactions_, 1668, p. 662.

[191:1] _The Lancet_, vol. ii; 1880.

[192:1] _The Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. lxxvii; November, 1807.

[193:1] _Anatomy of Melancholy_, vol. ii, p. 132.

[194:1] _The Chicago Inter-Ocean._

[195:1] _Boston Transcript_, March 10, 1900.

[196:1] _Music and Morals._

[199:1] _The Spectator_, August 18, 1714.

CHAPTER XVIII

QUACKS AND QUACKERY

Quackery and the love of being quacked, are in human nature as weeds are in our fields.

DR. J. BROWN, _Spare Hours_.

They are Quack-salvers, Fellowes that live by senting oyles and drugs.

BEN JONSON, _Volpone_, Act II, Scene 2.

These, like quacks in Medicine, excite the malady to profit by the cure, and r.e.t.a.r.d the cure to augment the fees.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

Here also they have, every night in summer, a world of Montebanks, _Ciarlatani_, and such stuff, who together with their remedies, strive to please the People with their little Comedies, Popet-plays and songs.

R. La.s.sELS, _Voy. Ital._: 1698.

_Le monde n'a jamais manque de charlatans; cette science, de tout temps, fut en professeurs tres fertile._ LA FONTAINE.

He took himself to be no mean Doctour, who being guilty of no Greek, and being demanded why it was called an _hectic_ fever; 'because,' saith he, 'of an _hecking_ cough, which ever attendeth that disease.'

THOMAS FULLER, _The Holy State_.

Man is a dupable animal. Quacks in Medicine, quacks in Religion, and quacks in Politics know this and act upon that knowledge. There is scarcely anyone who may not, like a trout, be taken by tickling.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

Quack doctors are indeed pompous, self-sufficient, affectedly solemn, venal and unfeeling with a vengeance.

VICESIMUS KNOX, D.D.

If Satan has ever succeeded in compressing a greater amount of concentrated mendacity into one set of human bodies, above every other description, it is in the advertising quacks.

_Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal._

The bold and unblushing a.s.sertion of the empiric, of a never-failing remedy, constantly reiterated, inspires confidence in the invalid, and not unfrequently tends by its operation on the mind, to a.s.sist in the eradication of disorder.

THOS. J. PETTIGREW, F.R.S.

The word _quack_, meaning a charlatan, is an abbreviation of _quack-salver_. To quack is to utter a harsh, croaking sound, like a duck; and hence secondarily, to talk noisily and to make vain and loud pretensions.[202:1] And a salver is one who undertakes to perform cures by the application of ointments or cerates. Hence the term quack-salver was commonly used in the seventeenth century, signifying an ignorant person, who was wont to extol the curative virtues of his salves. Now we see, said Francis Bacon, in "The Advancement of Learning,"[202:2] the weakness and credulity of men. For they will often prefer a mountebank or witch before a learned physician. And therefore the poets were clear-sighted in discerning this extreme folly, when they made Esculapius and Circe brother and sister. For in all times, in the opinion of the mult.i.tude, witches, old women and impostors have had a compet.i.tion with physicians.

According to one authority, the term _quack_ is derived from an ancient Saxon word, signifying small, slender and trifling, and hence was applied to shallow and frivolous itinerant peddlers, who foisted upon a credulous community such wares as penny-plasters, balsam of liquorice for coughs, snuffs for headaches, and infallible eye-lotions.[203:1]

It has also been maintained that quack is a corruption of _quake_, and that quack-doctors were so called because, in marshy districts, patients affected with intermittent fever, sometimes vulgarly known as the _quakes_, were wont to be treated by ignorant persons, who professed to charm away the disease, and hence were styled _quake-doctors_.

In William Harrison's "Description of the Island of Britain," occurs the following curious pa.s.sage: "Now we have many chimneys, and yet our tenderlings complain of reumes, catarres and poses; then had we none but reredores, and our heads did never ake. For, as the smoke in those days was supposed to be a sufficient hardening for the timber of the house, so it was reputed a far better medicine to keep the good man and his family from the _quacke_ or pose, wherewith as then very few were acquainted." A writer in "Notes and Queries,"[203:2] remarked that the word _quacke_, in the foregoing extract, probably signified a disease rather than a charlatan, and possibly the mysterious affection known as "the poofs," from which good Queen Bess suffered one cold winter. This _quacke_ appears to have been a novelty and therefore fashionable, affected by the tenderlings of that era, "as the proper thing to have."

The quack-doctor, continues the writer above mentioned, must have been a fashionable style of man, not meddling much with the poor, and familiar with boudoirs, curing the new disease with new and wondrous remedies.

May not the word _quacke_, asks Stylites, another enquirer, as above used, mean _quake_ or ague? For an ague-doctor must have had much employment, and if successful, great renown, in those days of fens, marshes and undrained ground.

In an anniversary discourse delivered before the New York Academy of Medicine, November 7, 1855, Dr. John Watson remarked that the numbers and pretensions of the illegitimate sons of Esculapius were as great in ancient as in modern times. And they were quite as wont to receive the patronage of the upper cla.s.ses. The Emperor Nero thus favored the shrewd Lydian pract.i.tioner, Thessalus, who maintained that all learning was without value.

And if we may believe the statements of Pliny and Galen, the Roman quacks equalled, if they did not exceed, in ignorance and arrogance, the vast horde of handicraftsmen, bone-setters, herniotomists, lithotomists, abortionists, and poison-venders, who overran Southern Europe throughout the Middle Ages.

The inhabitants of ancient Chaldea, in common with many primitive peoples of later times, cherished the belief that all diseases were caused by demons. Medicine was merely a branch of Magic, and the chief healing agents were exorcisms, incantations, and enchanted beverages.

There were, properly speaking, no physicians. Sometimes, wrote Francois Lenormant, in "Chaldean Magic," disease was regarded as an effect of the wickedness of different demons, and sometimes it appears to have been considered as the work of a distinct malevolent being, who exercised his power upon man.

According to the old Shamanic belief, which was the primeval religion of all mankind, every physical ailment is caused by a little devil which enters the body and can be expelled therefrom only by means of magic.